Media Business

"Mainstream media" are alarmed by reports that billionaires Charles and David Koch are considering the purchase of Tribune Company's eight daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. When Warren Buffett spent $344 million to purchase 28 newspapers, there were mostly sighs of relief from journalists glad to keep their jobs. However, reaction to reports of the Koch brothers' interest in…

Former CNN president Jon Klein and former NBC News president Steve Capus are reportedly among the finalists to take the helm of Al Jazeera America. "One of the biggest jobs in media is a new position and a high-risk opportunity: running Al Jazeera America," Sharon Waxman of TheWrap.com reported this morning (emphasis mine):

Integrity in journalism is not only optional, being dishonest is actually commendable. That was the message sent last night by the American Society of Magazine Editors as it gave one of its highly coveted National Magazine Awards to Mother Jones, the far-left publication which published a surreptitiously recorded video of former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaking to a…

Try as they might, the liberal sports media's efforts to shame the Washington Redskins into ditching their team name out of political correctness concerns hasn't significantly moved public opinion. A brand new Associated Press-GfK poll found 79 percent of respondents favored keeping the name. Of course in his story on the poll, AP's Ben Nuckols weighted his piece heavily with Skins detractors…

When MSNBC announced in March that Ed Schultz's weeknight program, “The Ed Show,” was being replaced by “All In,” which is hosted by 34-year-old Chris Hayes, the executives of the "Lean Forward" network hoped that the new hour-long program would hold onto the channel's liberal audience and even draw in younger viewers. Instead, the ratings for Hayes' broadcasts in April were down 18 percent…

Politico’s Dylan Byers reported “The Daily Beast is dropping Howard Kurtz, the veteran media critic who made headlines this week for his erroneous report about NBA star Jason Collins.” Kurtz erred in suggesting Collins hadn’t been forthcoming about his fiancee, even though he discussed her on both ABC and in the Sports Illustrated cover story that made “history.” Kurtz’s story was retracted on…

"If you're going to say that a known conservative entity like the Koch brothers should not be getting into the business of dictating what a news operation should do, what does that tell you about Warren Buffett," or the Sulzburger or Graham families behind the New York Times and Washington Post respectively, Brent Bozell argued on the April 30 edition of CNBC's Kudlow Report. Bozell also noted…

Bob Herbert: columnist from the Planet Benzar?  Seriously, what the former New York Times op-ed writer had to say this morning is enough to make you wonder whether he occupies the same orb as the rest of us.  Appearing on Melissa Harris-Perry's MSNBC show, Herbert literally laughed out loud at the notion that American media leans liberal.  According to Herbert, the bias in the American media is…

On his podcast Friday, as the networks were going wall-to-wall with live coverage of Boston, comedian and pundit Adam Carolla questioned whether Boston coverage was excessive. Matt Wilstein at Mediaite transcribed the conversation, which should be a journalism-school topic in the weeks to come. “Boston is three people dead, and quite a few injured,” Carolla said, “but it’s three people dead…

During an emotional pre-game tribute to the fallen and the heroes of the Boston Marathon bombings Saturday, Red Sox slugger David Ortiz dropped an f-bomb in front of the Fenway crowd. The FCC quickly voiced its approval Saturday via Twitter:

MSNBC circling the wagons? This NewsBuster is in no position to say that the FBI made a mistake by deciding not to monitor Tamerlan Tsarnaev after having interviewed him in 2011, acting on inquiries from Russian intelligence regarding his possible radical Islamic ties. But by the same token, MSNBC host Alex Witt is in no position to say the FBI didn't make a mistake.  Yet Witt has pre-…

Harrison Ford made a brutal critique of the news industry Thursday. Appearing on PBS's Tavis Smiley Show, the actor said the "divisiveness and fractiousness in our society" is caused by "what passes for journalism" today "fostering and supporting our prejudices" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the health-care insurance debate, one of the mantras of the left is to condemn those evil, greedy insurance companies that would charge higher rates to people with "pre-existing conditions." But in a commercial aired on last night's Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, there was "Progressive Insurance," whose chairman Peter Lewis is a huge donor to liberal causes including Moveon.org, condemning…